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EPILOGUE
In
the end, something vital remains to be said about the enduring phenomenon
of mystical experience itself. It has little to do with epistemology
or metaphysics – which at best are only so many superficial tangents
to the sublime experience which, we have seen, remains impenetrable
to reason. We are, I think, mistakenly inclined to see this deeply personal
and profoundly religious experience as somehow confined to the lives
of a few remarkable individuals who by and large have been saints in
a strictly canonical sense. We are intimidated by what we perceive to
be the austerity of the lives they had lived, and tend to see them as
persons quite apart from ourselves – and quite fortunately so. Very
likely we are acquainted with one narrative or another detailing the
severity of the lives they had lived – accounts sometimes embellished,
as all hagiography to some extent is – with the great trials and hardships
they endured in an adamantine faith that appears quite impossible to
most of us. They are figures who loom largely in unforgettable but nevertheless
dusty tomes from an age of faith as distant from us as the alchemist’s
art.
As a consequence, we tend to consign the
experience that shaped and ultimately defined their lives to the same
reliquary to which we reverently, but no less resolutely, shelf these
abstruse speculative systems together with the devout biographies that
accompany them – for it no longer seems viable in our age or even possible
in our lives. In short, the great mystical enterprise; indeed, the mystical
phenomenon itself, tends to be perceived essentially as an
historical phenomenon. This, I think, is due in large part to the
emphasis placed upon the medieval mystics who, not surprisingly, had
flourished in an age of faith, an age in which the Church predominated
and whose every institution to some extent understood itself in relation
to God. It was, moreover, the medieval mystics who had succeeded in
systematically formulating this ancient doctrine into a viable Christian
synthesis around which, at least implicitly, entire contemplative communities
were subsequently formed. The goal, after all, of every contemplative
is contemplation – and perfect contemplation culminates in union. These
most conspicuous figures in the history of mysticism, confined to a
fixed and distant era, seem – with few notable exceptions since – to
have formed the terminus of a tradition whose impulse had somehow withered
with the dawn of the Renaissance. But this, of course, is not true.
The many Discalced Carmelite monasteries throughout the world – which
have not merely survived, but have flourished – are extraordinary testimonies
to the vibrant continuity of this tradition. They, and other contemplative
orders – to say nothing of the lives of many individuals living contemplatively
within the world at large – are reminders in this postmodern era that
the ancient mystical impulse is indomitable, incessant, irrepressible
– even eternal.
In the end, I think that the invitation
to union is far more common than we suppose. I further think that the
basic intuition underlying the experience of this invitation is, however
indistinctly – and however reluctant we are to concede it – perceived
as God. I am equally persuaded, however, that it is a perception we
are likely to distort, resist, or even arrogantly dismiss. The reasons
for this, to be sure, are many and varied. But I also think that this
invitation leaves an indelible impression. However successful we are
in explaining it away, this unmistakable invitation, I am convinced,
is etched into the heart by God Himself, and continues to beckon us,
despite the disdain, even the reproach of reason, to something beyond
ourselves, something infinitely greater than our selves. And our reluctance
to respond to this invitation seems, in the end, to be rooted in fear;
the fear that, in the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “if we give
Him our finger, He will take our whole hand.” In an age that blenches
before any absolute commitment whatever, many of us simply are not prepared
to make a commitment as absolute as the invitation requires. For ultimately,
we realize, it entails far more than our hand, or even our heart, embracing,
as it does, the totality of our being in the totality of His love.
CONCLUSION
For all our speculative
efforts to arrive at some rational tangent between epistemological accountability
and the phenomenon of ecstatic union, we have achieved nothing more
than a logical excursus into a deeply and profoundly preterlogical reality.
The rigorously austere terms of logic only yield a pronouncement on
form, prescinding from substance. To understand consonance in form is
extrinsic to the subject of which it is predicated – except in purely
relational terms. That the terms putatively inherent in phenomena accord
with logic tells us nothing of the phenomena. Either they accord with
logic or reason or they do not. No more. Logic makes no existential
statements.
So what
does this mean? It means that this tedious discourse has merely presumed
to demonstrate that no conflict obtains between the canons of reason
and the phenomena of ecstatic union. It gives us absolutely no insight
into the experience itself – only the relational consonance inherent
within it.
Perhaps
a final, even apposite, metaphor remains: for those who have known nothing
of conjugal union, the nature, the form, the method – all the physiological
mechanics – of consummating that union are clearly understood. But however
exhaustive, however extensive, however comprehensively they are apprehended,
they yield nothing, absolutely nothing, of the nature of the experience
itself. However rich their vocabulary, however profound their knowledge,
not only will both be obviated by that union, but within that union
both will become utterly superfluous to it.
Ecstatic
union? Every other union is the merest, the most tenuous
metaphor – for this sublime union of the soul with God.
It is the
ultimate intimacy between the soul and God, the Bride and the
Groom; the inexpressible consummation of love that demurs from the intrusion
of reason, the prurience of language, the invasiveness of words, and
none may intrude upon it in a futile and ultimately officious attempt
to understand what can only be consummated.
A curtain
is drawn that only the Lover may know the Beloved.
END
About the Author
The author studied philosophy in the Bachelor’s,
Master’s, and Doctoral programs at Boston University. The Metaphysics
received the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat from the
Censor Librorum of the Archdiocese of Boston in an earlier
redaction. The author is a member of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association and a contributing editor to the
Boston Catholic Journal.
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